On April 12th, 2005 I was fortunate enough to be part of a press junket to Vancouver, British Columbia to view the set of, and interview people involved in the making of the movie “Slither”. The group was granted round table interviews with Visual Effects Supervisor John Gajdecki, actor Michael Rooker, and director James Gunn. While at the studio we were shown the “re-decorated” home of Grant and Starlla with the transformed Grant prosthetic, the barbecue propane showdown set, the barn set and the huge womb prosthetic. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, no problem; you will understand.
Interestingly enough, this past weekend (March 3rd, 4th and 5th, 2006) I got to be in Chicago for the Fangoria show. They loaded 300 or so of us onto charter buses and took us to a theater to see one of the first public showings of “Slither”. So, I got to see the end result of the cool sets I had visited nearly a year ago.
Below is part one of a three part installment. Over the next few weeks I will be bringing you the interviews. This week I am honored to bring you our round table discussion with Visual Effects Supervisor John Gajdecki.
If you are not a fan of possible spoilers, read no further, otherwise without further adieu… here you are.
Q: How many shots are in the film?
JG: It’s a movie, it has lots of shots! If you include the prosthetics, right now there 181 visual effects shots. The way it works is …you do your first breakdown, there’s 300 shots. They go “Oh my God, that’s way too expensive!” You get down to 200 effects shots, then they shoot, then they edit, and put the other hundred back in. So we’re gonna end up with about 300 shots.
Q: What was your first thought in terms of what kind of horror movie this was gonna be, what kind of effects we were gonna see, what kind of monster effects we were gonna see?
JG: My first thoughts upon reading the script were “This is a good script.” You read a lot of scripts in the business, and one thing that actually happens to you is that it destroys your ability to read fiction. (Laughs) Initially when I was working with James, I think I was proposing things that were a little bit funnier than what he had in mind. Not funnier kind of ha, ha; but just funnier kind of goofy. And maybe I was thinking in the Scooby-Do vein… So, you know, at first when you start working with a director, you and they have to find out... what is your idea, what sort of movies do you like to make? 'Cause really my job is to make their movie… so that the average audience doesn’t know I even exist. So, I really (had) to get inside of James’ head. So really, what kind of movies does James want to make? One of the best ways to get there… is we hire a bunch of artists, and we pre-viz (pre visualize) all the major scenes. We do low-res animation of all the major scenes.
When we get started, usually we do pre-viz of the main action from a visual effects point of view. We went out to the location and shot reference images.* What we actually ended up doing was really cool. We got some satellite imagery off the net and we projected the little town we were in onto that satellite imagery. If we want a church we put in a little church, if we want a gas station we put in a little gas station. If we’re very successful then we would figure out what’s going on. Then we block out the action just over and over again. Then we get James to come by and we get Greg Middleton the D.P. to come by, they sit with the artists and we… would work out just the right camera position and just the right timing. And we work all this out in advance. It’s kind of like directing without the heavy lifting.
Q: How would you describe the tone of it? Is it like lots of splatter and goo, or is it like Dark Shadows and CGI. Is there a way to describe it?
JG: There’s lots of goop. And, you know, everything’s been slimed-up, and everything’s leaving a little trail, and lots of things hide in the dark. It’s also pretty cool. It’s pretty creepy.
Q: What was the most elaborate sequence?
JG: Well… That’s actually a good question. There’s not a lot of shots there’s actually a lot sequences. Over the last ten years visual effects have gone from being shot based to being sequence based. All of the sequences involve Mr. Rooker. Halfway through the film, he’s sort of part way through his transformation. So he’s still very identifiable as Grant Grant the character. Uh… but you know, now he’s got tentacles on his head, and tentacle arms, and he’s got one sort of gimpy leg… (laughs) but, you know, he’s gotta eat meat. Then there’s the ranch scene (were one of the characters gets cut in half by one of Grant’s tentacles).
Q: What happens to Mr. Rooker’s character?
JG: He gets infected by an alien spore; and it’s pretty much all down hill from there.
Q: How did the alien spore get here?
JG: We begin with the asteroid in space.
Q: Now as a visual effects designer working with the director… this is not a new idea. What is you guiding principal as far as not doing what’s been done before, making it fresh, making it different?
JG: Our guiding principal is don’t be stupid. You know there’s basically two kinds of stories… like there’s two kinds of people in the world; those who like a world with two kinds of people and those who don’t. We’re looking at a fresh telling… of a classic in the genre. So, we’d like to think that we bring something new to the table.
Q: What kind of research was done [for the asteroid space scene and for how the parasites should look and behave]?
JG: Instead of lots of research we are working with highly qualified people (in their respective fields of expertise). Is there research? It happens…
Q: While working on this horror movie… can you discuss the most surreal day for you when you were on set.
JG: Well, Fridays turn surreal just ‘cause it’s the end of a really long week. Actually I had a great surreal moment yesterday. (Grabs the call sheet) Here’s the day. Here’s the bad news that we’ll try to correct later. And here’s everything we’re doing tomorrow, which is today. And every single box (says) physical effects, visual effects, stunts, prosthetics. Physical effects… just the same thing over and over and over. You never see and call sheet that’s just the same thing over and over and over. Because I’m the visual effects supervisor, I don’t necessarily oversee all of these people, but ultimately the buck stops here. If it doesn’t work with them, we fix it here. So this is just one entire day of not resting for a second. That… is surreal.
Q: Did you study Rob (The Fog, The Thing, Se7en) Bottin’s work… for man made effects?
JG: Yeah, we definitely looked at that stuff, it was really cool! You know, it was uh… all of those movies are scary because of what the actors are doing. That’s something fundamental that we always have to grant ourselves. What we do is, we take James’ script, and we take the actors that will support that story. And if the actors don’t work then it’s not gonna work out. Visual effects can’t save anything. We’re just another department, we help tell the story. Unfortunately we’re also the department that has to fix everything later. So you end up with lots of fixes. Anything can go wrong. You imagine it, we’ve fixed it.
Q: Getting back to a research question: how do the spores survive re-entry? Are they inside?
JG: Yes. When you see the asteroid coming in, you see chunks of it flying off and it lands [and the spores are inside the smaller pieces]. We have our best people working on that. (Laughs)
Q: What has been the biggest change since you first read the script?
JG: One of the coolest things about the script is that James is so precise. One of the best things about the film is that James is really on target. He knows what he wants.
Q: So, there haven’t been any major changes?
JG: No.
Q: Isn’t that unusual?
JG: Yes.
Q: The script wasn’t rewritten…
JG: The script has not been rewritten. That probably means it’s a pretty good script. For instance: One show I was on… they actually had to write a memo… it said: “The writers are no longer allowed to rewrite scenes that have already been shot”. This movie has been nothing like that. They wrote it; we shot it.
*One of the locations used in “Slither” was a town called Langley. This was also the town used when the pilot for “Stargate: Atlantis” was shot.
Check out our review of SLITHER by clicking here.
